Political correctness kick-started populism

The reason nobody saw the people’s revolt coming is that political correctness is too easily dismissed.

Reason has been supplanted by a secular inquisition, complete with an index of prohibited ideas. It is in effect a dictatorship of virtue, drawing upon the doctrine first promoted by Jean-Jacques Rousseau of forcing people to be free.

Of course it’s not freedom at all but a form of moral extortion: extracting a free pass for bad or questionable behaviour under threat of character assassination and social opprobrium.

My column in The Times of London. For the subscription-only link, please click here.